Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Downside of The Singularity

We are continuing on the transhuman trend today.

I’ve never been one to be blind to the drawbacks and possible pitfalls and perils of The Singularity.
What I have been opposed to are the ridiculous, ill-informed “what-ifs”
posed by neo-Luddites afraid of losing the experience of “being
human”…whatever that means these days. So if you want to have a serious
discussion about legitimate potential ill effects of transhumanism, this list posted at The Singularity Weblogis a good place to start.

You can read the list for yourself. I’ll give a brief description of each point here and add my own thoughts.

Brain
state issues at time of upload—if you choose to have your brain frozen
or otherwise preserved at death and then transferred to a computer, you
might be stuck in your last moment while conscious, meaning a state of
pain, fear, and hopelessness. Or delirium. Remember the last words of
Steve Jobs? “Oh wow. Oh wow!” If we progress far enough to upload
human consciousness, I feel fairly assured that we would likewise have
the technology to correct this issue. That and my hopes are for The
Singularity to occur before my death and to never even have to get to
this point.

Apathy—if no one cares about Singularity issues
before it happens, will we be stuck dealing with the aftermath? Knowing
us, it’s likely.

Corruption—building on that last point,
Singularity technology might be tools for dictatorship. Lord knows Alex
Jones (yes, him again) has been harping about Singularity supporters
and that we are helping to bring about a “scientific dictatorship.”
It’s extreme, but there might be a small amount of truth to this.
I’ve
always wondered about the economics of all of this. Transhuman
enhancements would likely go to those who could first afford them. Just
like William Gibson says, “The future is here, it just isn’t evenly
distributed.” That means the rich and the elite would get it first.
The 1%. If you have had your life extended and much of your body
replaced by cybernetics, would you care about the plights and concerns
for those people who are still “meat?” I doubt it. Additionally,
looking at the continual “dumbing” of America. The truly powerful in
the future will be those who understand Singularity technology and are
in control of it. Computers are already “the new literacy” and this
will only increase by logarithmic magnitudes. If you don’t understand
and control the technology in life, you will be controlled by it. Just a
question of if the new world would look more like 1984 or Brave New
World.

Unfriendly robots and AIs—fodder for any number of
fictional works. I can understand the apprehension. "The AI does not
hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it
can use for something else,” said Eliezer Yudkowsky. An intelligence
that operates on pure logic yet is bereft of human ethics and
compassion. Unfortunately, that form of AI is easier to create than the
kind that would have its own emotions. While I don’t dismiss this
entirely as potential threat, I also don’t find it to be an overly
likely one. Again, knowing the technology will help you control it.

Loss
of identity—will humans be forced to continually interface with cloud
computing in order to control devices or become more efficient? Will we
then transform into something like the Borg with a “hive mind?” Since
the advent of the Internet and social media, you can find out more about
a person than you ever could before. Secrets are fewer and farther
between, just think of what could happen if our own thoughts were no
longer private? I scoffed at this one at first but with Internet
privacy and security already being topics of major concern, I can see
how they will only become more problematic in the future.

Yes,
these are not exactly trivial concerns. There are always a million
reasons not to do something, aren’t there? “What if” fears should not
hold us back. We should be mindful of them but not at the expense of
advancement.

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I'm a writer, scholar, and researcher in the Chicago area. I have an M.A. in Writing from DePaul University. What do I write? Science fiction mostly. What do I research? Rhetoric and composition theory, all things Fortean...as well as other unpopular things.
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